Also if anyone is interested in reading the essay of Wilson's
"I Seem to be a Verb"
The wind is part of the process
The rain is part of the process
-- Ezra Pound, Canto 74
Pound, beaten by rain and wind in his outdoor cage at Pisa, remembers a bit
from Kung-fu-tse, who also knew hard times. I think a lot these days about
Dao, the ideogram Ez translates as "the process," and which most Americans
still spell old-style as Tao. More traditional renderings turn Dao into a
capitalized abstraction such as "the Way" or "the Path," and anybody trying to
understand them feels like their brain has just turned to oatmeal.
Although too ignorant of Chinese to trust my own judgement, I have always
preferred Ez's rendering of Dao as "process" on the basis of Ernest
Fenollosa's claim that ideograms render "noun and verb as one -- things in
motion, motion in things." That fits the world of modern physics, of
perception psychology and of what little I think I know of Chinese. You can
imagine my delight when Daniel Coyle, a friend who recently [1999] earned a
Ph.D. in Chinese studies, assured me that Pound got it right.
Dao, the process, seems more nitty-gritty and tangible since I acquired an
apartment with a panoramic vista of Monterrey Bay and the surrounding hills.
The view never seems quite the same twice. Waves, sun, fogs, seasons, dogs,
dolphins, moons, planets, stars -- all seem flowing, as if every kind of
evolution, cosmic to biological,parades before me.
More and more I lose contact with "me" and flow with all else that flows..the
Dao-process.
An old proverb of the Middle Kingdom says, "The wise become Confucian in good
times, Buddhist in bad times and Daoist in old age." If some pookah magick
made me thirty years younger, in the present wretched state of this nation,
I'd have to become a Buddhist. Old age has its advantages. When pain keeps me
from writing, I eat a magick muffin, sit on the balcony and get totally lost
in the Dao.
Yeah, even in the rain and wind.
Cheers,
Erin
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